


Wet/Dry

by eliddell



Category: Zegapain
Genre: Character Study, Existential Angst, Gen, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 11:18:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3132518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliddell/pseuds/eliddell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shima's musings on whether or not he really exists.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wet/Dry

**Author's Note:**

> If you pick a random scene from the Zegapain anime series, and it doesn't contain either a mecha battle or someone swimming, chances are fairly good that it will involve someone talking about the nature of existence and what it means to be real. The main character does it. His friends do it, even the ones who have no idea what the heck is going on. Even AIs do it.
> 
> There's one character with a unique perspective who doesn't do it, though, or at least not that we ever see. And when I pulled this anime out for a re-watch over the Christmas holidays, my subconscious decided that this was a crying shame and glued me to the computer for eight hours the next day so that I could write this . . . thing. 
> 
> My subconscious can be pretty frustrating to deal with sometimes.

"Like I'm gonna let that happen! This is a total waste of time—let's go, Kaminagi!" 

The girl gives me an apologetic look as her Gunner/boyfriend grabs her by the hand and all but drags her out of the meeting room. They'll be ready for their first battle soon, I think. I give her the least of tiny nods to show that I'm not offended, but out of the corner of my eye, I can see Minami scowling. She never has understood Kyo. Then again, she also thinks that I walk on water. 

She's a nice girl and a good second-in-command, but there are some lacunae in her ability to judge character. 

I wince and adjust my position as the meeting breaks up. Dry Damage is prickling at the back of my right calf again, but so far no one has noticed, or is likely to if they don't look under the table. I'll wait until everyone is gone before I get up. 

But Minami waits stubbornly for me in the doorway. I close my eyes for a moment and take a deep breath. Sometimes I can redirect the corrosion to Wet Damage by an act of will, let it eat away at childhood memories that are little more than lace now, or at hundreds of subjective years' worth of contemplation. 

If Wet Damage were calculated based on the _length_ of the past one has lost, I'd be considered worse off than every other Celebrant combined, both the living and the dead. Fortunately, it's calculated in percentages, so I _appear_ to be in better shape than Kyo-kun. Certainly in better shape than Arque Avenir was at the time she died. 

The most important information I bear is redundantly stored, just in case. And the rest doesn't matter, because it isn't really mine anyway. Or is it? 

I suppose it all depends on whether or not I'm real. 

_Emptiness is form. Form is emptiness._ Once, those words gave me . . . or someone very like me . . . not only understanding, but a kind of comfort. But now . . . 

If you photocopy a document, there's no question of which one is the original. You can always tell. Infinitesimal amounts of visual information missing, spurious information added where random particles floating in the air have gotten themselves sandwiched between paper and glass. It seems that if you photocopy a person, the effect is much the same. I am "CP-041". I am not him. There are too many subtle differences. And yet I _was_ him, and I cannot be anyone else. 

What was his name? I can't remember anymore. It's in the middle of one of the holes in the lace. If I really strain, I can find inside myself the tone of a woman's voice, rising and falling. Summoning someone. But the sounds themselves are gone. 

I think it must have been a long name. It might even be in the old news articles alongside Naga's. I've never quite dared look. It would be too much like admitting something, although I'm not quite sure what. 

Kyo-kun, you had yourself tied into knots regarding your personhood and the validity of your existence. There were times I had the impulse to punch you, to grab you by the collar and smash you up against a wall and shout in your face that you had no idea. 

He wouldn't have wanted to do those things. Do I want them because I'm a different person, or just because that part of my psyche is an imperfect copy riddled with Wet Damage? 

I don't know. I can't know. I never will. 

Against those doubts and the knowledge of impending death, all the sutras in the world are powerless to help me. They can't even calm the guilt roiling in the pit of my stomach. 

_We were wrong._ I wish I could turn it into "they were wrong", but that is one of the bits of knowledge burned over and over again into my psyche, the first thought that crossed my mind when he allowed me to wake. _We were wrong._ Incorrect objective due to lack of understanding of methods. 

"Evolution" is one of those things every educated person _thinks_ they understand. The deficient science education offered to the average citizen of the developed world before everything fell apart left most people with the impression of a grand march forward from single-celled amoeba to human being, with every creature in the parade knowing which direction "forward" is. 

Nothing could be more wrong. Evolution is a sprawling mass of dividing and rejoining pathways along which organisms move forward, backward, sideways, or around in circles, with sideways being most common—most mutations that result in a viable organism in the first place are neither advantageous nor detrimental. "Survival of the fittest", we say, but "fitness" is a remarkably circumstantial quality. "Fit" for what environment, exactly? And exactly how long will that environment exist? How do you measure "fitness"? By species longevity? Wide-spectrum adaptability? Conversely, such exact adaptation to a niche that the organism in question outcompetes all others there? 

By most of those measures, the common cockroach is more "fit" than humanity ever was. Conversely, humans carrying the gene for sickle-cell anemia appear to be less "fit" than other humans, but that's actually an advantageous adaptation if you live in a place where malaria is common and treatment options for it are limited. Environment, again. 

The GARDS-ORM avatars live on a server with no random inputs. It's a highly controlled environment, and over the subjective centuries they've become quite highly evolved . . . to living on a server. I wondered, when Abyss and Sin first appeared, why Naga, or the altered entity that was once him, didn't mass-produce more like them. We've never had more than a hundred Celebrants at a time—two or three hundred GARDS-ORM would have buried us. But it didn't take me all that long to figure out the truth: Abyss and Sin were likely the only ones who could survive in the uncontrolled, random environment of the real world without going insane. More evidence that the GARDS-ORM are an evolutionary dead end: the only environments they can survive are those that they also create, like a snake with its tail in its mouth. 

I have never really existed outside a server, but at least I have memories, or fragments of them, of being a "real" human being, and experience of how the physical world behaves. I think that makes me better-adapted than the GARDS-ORM, if less "evolved". 

One of me once agreed with Naga, but learned better. The other always knew. I try not to probe the dichotomy very often, because it makes my brain hurt. Am I one, or am I two? 

Even my name is a joke. _Shima_. "No man is an island, complete in himself . . ." and especially not me. 

I don't find it funny anymore. I didn't find it funny from the moment the other commanders started choosing code-names that also meant "island", and their lieutenants joined in and chose names meaning port or wharf or dock. Now it's more like driving a needle into my eye every time I let myself think about it. Each functioning server and each mothership, an island in the GARDS-ORM flood. Not a joke at all. 

I don't think that I— _he_ —was ever very good at jokes. Not at understanding them, and certainly not at making them. I don't think that I— _I_ , Shima/CP-041—have ever laughed. I don't think I've ever done anything for the sheer pleasure of doing it, either . . . unless you count attending South Maihama High, and even that is a restricted sort of pleasure. I inserted myself into the server after the former Student Council President had made the first, fatal discovery of the existence of Abyss three days before the system needed to be reset. His absence would have left too much of a hole, which meant that someone had to take his place, and I hadn't yet recruited Minami then. 

I expected it to be something to endure. There are still memories of a private school somewhere in India or the Middle East trapped in the lacework, and they are not good ones. But South Maihama . . . thirty-one five-month cycles and I still find it amusing, somehow. I'm more of an observer there than a participant, relying absolutely on the rules when it comes to my "official" duties, but it still manages to be . . . fun. To play at being human in a place where the idea that I might not be real never crosses anyone's mind. The same sequence of events every time, or almost, but changing fractally, tiny details shifting according to who's Awakened and who isn't there anymore, Wet Damage and pseudo-random numbers forming a constant, subtle flux in the pattern. It's . . . soothing, the contrast between that world and the violence and death of reality. 

And now it's ending. I knew when we moved the server that I was taking a risk with my life, but I don't have too many more cycles left before the damage to my avatar would become obvious even with periodic maintenance. I am not built to last, and I don't have the means to research additional avatar repair techniques from here. Every particle of server space we can scrape together is loaded with fragments of recovered avatars, waiting for peace and repair and reconstitution. There's none left over for me to use for my own selfish purposes. 

My only chance, if I can hold myself together that long, lies with him, with nameless-other-me. It's . . . galling, I suppose. Not just to know that my life is in his hands, but also knowing that everything I do will be laid at his feet. Whether "Shima" survives or dies, every action I have ever taken will be attributed to _him_ , not me. 

I'm sure that Minami would say it won't be so, but I know better. I can see the pattern. Human nature. Anyone who discovers the connection will see me as a subset, and him as the superset. 

At least you can prove that you were alive, Kyo-kun. I can't even do that. 

"Commander? Are you all right?" 

I force a smile. "Sorry, Minami. I was thinking." And the prickling in my calf is gone, although I feel a headache coming on. Fresh Wet Damage. I wonder what it ate this time, which piece of him . . . or of me. 

"I figured that out. Commander Isola wants to talk to you." 

"All right." 

She offers me her hand to help me up, but I use the edge of the table to lever myself to my feet instead. I try not to touch her most of the time. She's already too attached, and I am not going to draw her down into the vortex of my private hell. 

Maybe, if I survive, I'll be able to take that hand one day. 

But I'm already fairly sure that won't ever come to be.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone reading this is wondering about the progress of _Two Lesser Stars_ , I'm about halfway there, I think--it's going to be another monster like _Repatriation_ , from the look of it.


End file.
